


Strings Attached

by SpicedGold



Series: Itachi/Shisui One-Shot Collection [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: M/M, Non-Explicit Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-27
Updated: 2017-05-27
Packaged: 2018-11-05 14:57:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11015751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpicedGold/pseuds/SpicedGold
Summary: Everyone needs a way to relieve tension - and Itachi's tended to be volatile and deadly. Shisui wants to change that.Someone needs to help Itachi balance out his life, and make sure the strings of his self control are holding firmly.





	Strings Attached

**Author's Note:**

> Itachi has two people in his life holding him in the balance, suspending him over the edge of no return. He just needs the right balance, and Shisui is more than happy to take charge and make sure all the tension is where it belongs.

There have been, so far, only two things that have caused Itachi to become undone.

The boy was a tightly wound ball of nerves, twisted from a young age into paranoia and hair-trigger reaction-time, and encouraged to remain that way because a good ninja is an alert one. And so, since he was six years old, Itachi has not known how to relax, but rather bundled up his tension inside, until it no longer fitted within his tiny frame, and it had to explode out eventually, and being that Itachi was dramatic and deadly, so too was the manifestation of his outward control breaking.

The first time, it was Sasuke. Itachi’s younger brother, who he doted on, loved beyond all others, and held in the highest regard, had just so happened to get into a small playground fight. It should have been inconsequential, and it would have been, had the irate boy he had ticked off not hurled a rock at Sasuke’s face with impressive force but abysmal aim.

The rock had walloped the child on the side of the forehead, the edge just sharp enough to break the skin. The very second blood had started to flow – and it had _gushed_ , as head wounds do – Itachi’s sanity exploded into a thousand tattered shreds, and his vision went red – not, for once, due to his blood line limit. His murderous rage had been short lived, as Shisui had been at his side and had immediately locked the older Uchiha heir into a full nelson before he was able to snap the offending kid’s neck.

The result had been a black eye and bleeding nose for Shisui from the back of Itachi’s head, Sasuke looking at his brother with awe and a dropped jaw, and Itachi’s flailing lasting until Shisui had yelled his way through the hurricane of deadly intent screaming in Itachi’s head.

Shisui had not been impressed, spending the rest of the day gingerly touching his nose and bleeding over everything, but Sasuke had been enamoured with this show of ‘affection’, looking absolutely adoringly at his brother, with a large plaster on his head and freshly washed skin and clean clothes on, while the older boy endured a long, tedious lecture from his father.

The second time he’d snapped had been on a mission, at the delicate age of twelve, under the supervision of the infamous Copy Ninja, Hatake Kakashi. It was sheer luck that the mission had occurred inside of Konoha, and even greater luck that Shisui had been within earshot, since it was a well-known fact that Itachi listened without fail to only three people – his father, his brother, and his flamboyant cousin.

It was not a secret that Itachi was often on edge. It was not surprising that the boy had to have a breaking point. What had been surprising was that it occurred without prior warning, when his teammate had casually laughed at the task at hand, a simple assassination of two boys seeking refuge in Konoha – and usually, it wouldn’t be an Anbu level job, but both boys were talented missing nin, and after several attempts to subdue them in less fatal ways, Kakashi’s Anbu team had been called in to dispose of them. Which they were doing, until the youngest boy, at the business end of a silver blade, had suddenly screamed for his brother in a wailing, pleading voice, the sound echoing off the walls of the alley way, “Nii-san!”

Then his teammate _laughed_ , and before he had finished his chuckle, Itachi’s self-control had snapped and left him blind to reason, thus sending his teammate flying head first into a nearby wall. In the mad scramble that ensued, with Kakashi barking orders, yelling in clipped tones for Itachi to _back the hell down_ , the boy target had fallen to someone else’s blade, but that was the least of Kakashi’s worries as the world spun nauseatingly, and he recognised the signs of a powerful genjutsu beginning, one he was unsure he could shut down.

The coincidence of the day occurred when Shisui flew around the corner at blinding speed, reacting out of instinct at the yell of a fellow Leaf ninja, and had taken less than a second to assess the scene, flickering his way to Itachi’s side and staring without fear directly into those deadly Sharingan eyes.

Kakashi stayed completely still, breath caught in his throat, as the two stared at each other, Shisui’s Sharingan entering into Itachi’s mind and shutting him down. Kakashi didn’t know how long it took – it felt like eternity – but finally Itachi slumped forward into his cousin’s waiting arms, apparently unconscious, and Shisui’s four-pointed Mangekyou faded away, and the world returned to normal.

It remained the only disciplinary remark in Itachi’s record.

After two uncontrolled breakdowns, Itachi began to keep a closer eye on himself, and make a point to keep his emotions in check, and keep everyone around him safe. He was unwilling to unravel again. So, he locked the tension tight inside, where he could monitor it, suffer from it, and never, ever see the need to release it, even when things reached boiling point.

The third thing that almost broke him proved to be Shisui himself, the saviour of every other bad situation, and Itachi couldn’t even find it in himself to be angry.

Even when Shisui was doing it on purpose.

“Shisui,” he choked, voice sounding almost broken, trying to convey his desperation, because he could feel control slipping away and now would not be a good time to break into a thousand deadly pieces.

“Stay with me,” Shisui replied, voice silken but utterly unafraid, and Itachi wanted to hit him because he couldn’t help it, he wasn’t _trying_ to fall apart but he was going to, and it would be the most spectacular break down anyone would ever witness.

Well, only one witness. One witness, who kissed softly at his throat, and slid his hands up Itachi’s arms in the pale moonlight, hands encircling his wrists and checking, once again, the soft bindings that held him because even Shisui wasn’t that stupid as to try this when he knew Itachi was going to fight back at some point, even though it was against his will.

“You need this,” Shisui whispered, sliding his hands back down to where they had been, trailing soft touches up and down Itachi’s heaving chest, and pressing slightly deeper into the younger boy. Itachi liked it quick and hard, it fitted into his overly efficient take on the world, but it did nothing to alleviate the stress that had built into his body, and he had lost patience quickly.

Shisui, on the other hand, outdid him in both strength and stamina, and he could do this all day, rocking into the younger boy with aching slowness, pausing, kissing, touching, then drawing back in the same excruciatingly slow way. The build-up was meant to take time, it was meant to wind Itachi into a writhing, begging mess. It was working.

“Please,” Itachi tried to push his hips up, to hurry Shisui along, but Shisui just lazily pinned him down, hiding a smile against Itachi’s chest, because no one else would ever, _ever_ see the young prodigy beg like this. No one else would see him shudder, bite his lip with such force that Shisui was concerned he might lose it, or swallow down a whimper. No one would see his pale skin flex over tight muscles as he fought, however half-heartedly, against the hands holding him down, frustration evident on his face.

“We’re fine,” Shisui replied with another slow rock of his hips that had Itachi arching towards him, chest heaving beautifully, his skin shining with sweat. And Shisui would be lying if he said he didn’t enjoy torturing Itachi just a little, because he knew he was the only one in the world who could make him lose his usual composure like this.

“I’m going to kill you,” Itachi hissed from behind tightly closed eyes, the muscles in his arms suddenly rippling in an attempt to pull away from Shisui’s restraints.

Shisui replied with a faint laugh, wholly unafraid of his cousin’s threats. This was the first time they were using the restraints, Shisui’s idea, of course, because he wanted to see how far he could push before Itachi snapped, and getting Itachi to truly relax and let his comfortable, familiar tension go was an uphill struggle, but this way Shisui was completely safe to take his time. The threats had been coming thick and fast, but as time wore on Itachi’s composure was slipping, and he had degenerated into bitten off moans instead.

Shisui kissed Itachi’s next threat away, rolling his hips forwards just a little bit faster, and Itachi made another broken, hoarse sound against Shisui’s mouth, his entire body shaking with _something_.

Every nerve was snapping with wildfire, every muscle tensed and clenched, and Itachi could feel it building inside him, the pressure rising like a deadly volcano about to erupt, and he tamped it down the best he could, trying to quell that anger and tension back inside where it belonged, because letting it out was wrong, it wasn’t allowed, no ninja would ever allow himself to show such a blatant display of emotion, and he _would not-_

Shisui snapped his hips forwards, hard, and Itachi couldn’t stop the sound that came out of his mouth. “Stop trying, Itachi. Let it go.” _Stop holding it back. You’ll feel much, much better._ He pressed another gentle kiss to Itachi’s throat.

With eyes still squeezed shut, face scrunched in a look of absolute concentration, Itachi shook his head violently. He would not. He would not give in to Shisui’s mad ideas of ‘relaxing’ because it wasn’t relaxing, for starters, and also because he was _not_ going to lose control. It never ended well. He was _fine_ with his unhealthy levels of anxiety.

But Shisui always won, because he had more patience, and he could push, and pull, and antagonize all night, whereas Itachi would snap in about two more minutes, and Shisui had ways to shorten that time. The pressure was still building, he knew, and Itachi would come apart in mere moments, and finally, _finally_ , he would have the prodigy in a zen-like state of bliss – but to get that, Itachi had to reach the point of absolute, maddening agony, pleasurable though Shisui might make it.

Watching Itachi shaking underneath him was glorious, but he was at his breaking point already, teetering on the edge, and Shisui figured it was time to tip him over, before he hurt himself with his stubborn attempts to keep every muscle rigid and under his steel-hard control. So, with a cheeky grin that Itachi couldn’t see, focused as he was on not settling down under Shisui’s playful torture, Shisui leant down, pushing in deep and fast, and bit onto the quivering cord of muscle on the side of Itachi’s neck.

That was all it took, all it usually took when the pressure was built so high, and Itachi was so fragile, that those two little movements together were all that was needed to send Itachi’s sanity tumbling to the ground. His teeth clamped down onto his lower lip again, head thrown back, and he came as silently as ever, always unwilling to make a noise if he could help it.

Shisui absently thrust into him a few more times, pleased when Itachi let a whimper escape without concealing it, and when Itachi’s trembling stopped and his body became limp, Shisui pulled out of him, and tugged himself to completion.

It was several minutes before Itachi dared to open his eyes, liquid coal looking peaceful.

Shisui grinned. “Doesn’t that feel better?”

Itachi wanted to make some scathing remark about time management, but he felt too sated and relaxed to bother, which, infuriatingly, was what Shisui wanted.

Shisui reached up to untie his wrists, and Itachi let his arms flop limply wherever Shisui dropped them.

“If you take that long again,” Itachi said in a honey sweet voice, “I will kill you in your sleep.”

“It had the desired effect,” Shisui replied. “You look like you’ve melted in place there.” He reached forward to ruffle Itachi’s hair, and when he received nothing but a soft smile he knew Itachi was exhausted, because the boy hated anyone messing with his hair.

Itachi heaved a sigh, body lax. “Perhaps.”

The lack of tension felt foreign. It felt as though he was in someone else’s body. It was strange, feeling boneless and without strain on every muscle. Even though Shisui drove Itachi mad – because honestly, these things were meant to be quick, and just _get it done_ , not spend what felt like hours pulling Itachi’s sanity taut until it snapped – he couldn’t find it in himself to protest too much. Certainly not now, with his body lying languid and his mind at ease, and the world perfectly still.

Shisui lay down beside him, bodies pressed close, and ran a hand through Itachi’s damp hair. “Still want to kill me?”

“Maybe later.”

Shisui grinned. “See, it wasn’t that bad. You’ve already forgiven me.”

The truth was, Itachi would forgive Shisui anything, because Shisui was the grounding force in Itachi’s life, one of two very important people who Itachi would grant any wish, and give everything he had. Because while it seemed like Itachi was strung out on an endless path of unease, teetering on the very edge of sanity at all times, he had two people holding him in place.

It was the reason he had snapped when Sasuke had been hurt, because Sasuke was the string in his life that needed him, needed his protection, needed his constant vigilance. Sasuke was the thing he needed to protect, holding him up from the one side as he dangled over the precipice of lost control.

But Shisui, the other string, was the one who protected, who looked over Itachi’s life like a guardian, someone who could read him like a book and see what he needed, in order to keep the strings taut, and Itachi strung between them safely, with his sanity, humour and integrity intact. Shisui knew how to hold Itachi steady on his path, so narrow and so precarious that falling off would be so, so easy, and impossible to recover from.

And if one of those strings were cut . . .

. . . Itachi would fall.

 


End file.
